Victory
by 100PercentHalfwayThere
Summary: Zim conquers the Earth, and is defeated twice. Oneshot.


**Victory**

_**~Zim conquers the Earth~**_

Zim couldn't remember entering the corridor.

In a word, it was _twisty_. Or maybe Zim was just dizzy? Bah. Irkens do not get dizzy. Dizzify? Dizzilate? Stupid human verbs.

_Hello, Zim._

"Eh?" Zim called out. "Who are-"

_I am whatever you want me to be._

"Ooh! Be an armada, then," Zim spat caustically. The hallway was giving him a headache. Zim stopped to lean against the wall. In the same instant he felt as though he was asleep and supported, yet awake, and as though he'd fallen through, as if there was nothing there to begin with.

_Very well._

Zim looked up; the hallway was now gone. A shimmering, glittering, immeasurable fleet stood before him. Ripples moved through the vision, throwing off the confused Irken in a way not unlike the ethereal hallway.

_I can give you the power. To do, to be, whatever you desire._

"You can do anything?" Zim scowled. "Even kill-"

_Not kill. But give you the tools to kill. Yes._

"Then do it!" Zim cried, more directly than he'd intended. 15 years was a long time to wait, after all.

_If you insist._

xxxx

Zim awoke. Or had he been awake this whole time?

"Please, Zim. Don't. I... don't...stop," the sound of an already dead voice coughed sickly.

A gun was pressed firmly into Zim's three-fingered grip. Looking down the weapon, Zim discovered the bruised, weary face of the soldier. Gunfire in the distance. Uncountable fires in his blind spots.

Zim pulled the trigger. He was grinning.

xxxx

_This is what you want?_

Zim stared into the darkness. Somehow, as if his mind was projecting one of its half-formed visions in a way Zim both could and couldn't truly see, the cloud of a fresh explosion subsided. Zim now stared upon war-scarred cliffs, piles of burnt or burning corpses and soon-to-be corpses. Some were human. Some he couldn't tell.

"And then my Tallests will congratulate me, and I will own this filthy rock?"

_Yes. In time._

"I want it to happen now! Make it so it happens now!"

_I cannot do that. That is not how our exchange works._

"Exchange?"

xxxx

"I... I'll do anything, but please, please just-"

"Hmm-?" Zim focused once again. His memory was playing some sort of trick on him.

Zim surveyed the cliffs. He'd killed all those other men. Or most of them, anyways. They'd died by his hand. And yet here he was, facing this same soldier again. The ground beneath the creature didn't indicate any sort of misfire.

Zim breathed, steadying himself. He fired once again.

xxxx

_You're impatient._

"I have been trying to find a way to destroy the Earth now for 15 years! You call that impatience?!"

_Then you can learn to wait a few years more. Now, from you, I merely want-_

"I don't have anything to give you!" Zim spat, more defeated than defiant. A look of loss infected his eye.

_-A moment of your time._

xxxx

"Jesus, you sick bastard! How long are you going to-"

"As long as I please," Zim replied dully. A ringing echoed through his mind. Possibly a nearby explosion. Perhaps a voice. There was so much blood.

One of those creatures, Zim now realized, neither human nor Irken, was strewn up and down the hill Zim and the soldier now locked eyes upon. He gazed up at the golden battalion. It had been a stroke of luck.

They were not so dazzling, Zim thought.

The man was dead once more.

xxxx

_You are some kind of monster. I must say I do not fully understand you._

"Zim is no monster! Zim is an irken! We are bred for conquest. Conquest you have secured for me! Now give me what I want!"

_In time, in time._

xxxx

The soldier's helmet was chipped, Zim noticed. The soldier himself was dirty. For the hell of it, Zim shot him in the shoulder.

"AAUGH!" he cried. Zim kicked him in his raw, bloody nerve.

"You unbelievable coward," Zim spat.

"I could say...the same of you," he replied.

"Do you wish to provoke your killer, the mighty Irken Zim?!" Zim cried out.

"If you are my killer, what have I to gain by not?"

Angry and put off by his statement, Zim blew the helmet- and half of the man's head- straight off.

xxxx

_What do you miss, Zim?_

"Zim needs no one. Zim misses no one!" the invader howled.

_Yet you seek approval. You seek conquest. You seek a people to rule._

"Shut up!" Zim retorted lamely. He found himself exhausted. "Give me that! Give it to meee!" He gestured desperately at the fleet before him, only to find it had transfigured into something else.

Something horrible.

"Take that away. Do you- DO YOU HEAR ME!?" Zim bellowed. "Get it away."

_I am merely projecting your thoughts._

"I do not wish to think, then," Zim decided.

_Do you wish for me to close your mind?_

"To that. Perhaps," Zim's pride disallowed his weakness to manifest wholly.

xxxx

"You're still here."

"You haven't shot me yet."

"Why do you not try to retaliate?"

"I'm thinking. Remembering."

Zim was struck by the casual tone of his victim. He should be crying in fear, not reminiscing. Zim told him this in his most threatening tone. The man almost laughed. Zim shot him.

xxxx

_There. I have closed your mind and given you your tools._

"You haven't given me anything!" Zim replied, shocked at the audacity of the spirit. It was surely a spirit. Its voice filled his mind and the room separately and subsequently at the same time. Its voice _was_ the room, in a way.

It was all that was left.

xxxx

Zim was all too aware of the bodies lying around him upon the cliffs he'd so come to despise. His gaze focused, tuning the horrors- for horrors they were- out. That same soldier faced back.

He had killed him! But he remained? Perhaps he simply imagined firing.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"I am going to kill you."

"Then please, hurry it along."

The filthy beast mocked Zim. "You shall die when I order you to die. You will fear it!"

"I no longer fear anything. Not even you."

A hail of bullets met the insolent soldier. Bullets were cheap, after all. Zim, anguished, kicked the body. He hadn't the ability to move from his spot. He knew then he'd done away with the last human on Earth.

And he'd won.

And once more, Zim beheld it.

And again.

Forever.

_A moment of your time._

Victory. 


End file.
